Non-continuous power sources like solar and wind are viable as long as there is a backup supply for those times when it is dark and quiet. That backup can be so

Non-continuous power sources like solar and wind are viable as long as there is a backup supply for those times when it is dark and quiet. That backup can be some form of power storage in regions where the quiet/dark periods are reliably predictable and predictable short, e.g. between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. This is not the case for where I live (Sweden) as it reliably gets dark and quiet for several months on a stretch. Fortunately we have hydropower as a reliable backup but that is only a solution because we happen to have mountains which allowed for the construction of dams to catch the run-off from spring snow melt. Elsewhere in the more northern and southern regions as well as the more foggy/cloudy places another form of backup power is needed: nuclear, gas and other hydrocarbon sources, coal. At protests against the use of fossil hydrocarbons for transport an often heard claim is that the true costs of this practice are not paid for by the taxes put on fuel and vehicles. The claim is that there are many other costs which are paid for by society, from costs related to pollution and related health problems to costs related to international conflicts which stem from the presence of hydrocarbon sources in conflict-ridden regions. The same claims can be made for non-continuous power sources like solar and wind: these power sources are only viable just as long as there is a backup power supply with the same capacity while the costs for those backup power supplies are not factored in the claims for investment risks. Just like cars and trucks depend on an infrastructure which is only partly paid for by their users non-continuous power sources depend on an infrastructure which is paid for by others, in this case those who invest in reliable base load power generation capacity like nuclear power. I have a 14 kW solar array on the barn roof feeding a 10 kW 3-phase inverter which currently provides enough power to feed our farm and our neighbours - we export about 8 MWh yearly. There's a big cloud getting close to the sun, once it moves over it power output will drop to 2 kW or lower in an instant. The slack is taken up by 'the grid', the costs of which were not factored in when I bought the panels + mounting hardware, inverter, cables, over-current protection, switches and other bits and bobs I used when I installed the array. Of course I did pay for the grid in other ways, mostly through decades of taxation. An investor in a solar farm will not pay for that grid though, he'll only see the costs for the hardware and the grid hookup which leads to the claim made in this article: 'investment risk lowest for solar'. This may be true but it is not the whole story and using only investment risk as a guideline for building a power grid will lead to dark power-less winter nights because investing in base load generation capacity was deemed to be too risky.